Judge Denny Chin, the same judge who signed off on Madoff’s 150-year sentence in 2009, said, “it was fully my intent that he live out the rest of his life in prison.”

“Compassionate release is not warranted,” he added.

Madoff, 82, who pilfered billions of dollars away from investors in history’s largest Ponzi scheme, asked in February for an early release from prison after discovering he had less than 18 months to live. He has kidney disease, uses a wheelchair and a back brace and was admitted to hospice in July, according to the compassionate release court filing.

Several Jewish charities shut down after finding out their endowments had been blown on Madoff’s family and friends. Others, like the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation and Yeshiva University, all of which invested with Madoff, suffered serious financial repercussions.

His lawyer, Brandon Sample, said in the filing that Madoff “humbly asks this court for a modicum of compassion” and “does not dispute the severity of his crimes.”

The Bureau of Prisons denied a separate early-release petition last September, saying an early release would “minimize the severity of his offense.”

He has also sought to have President Donald Trump commute his sentence, so far without success.

Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 counts including fraud, money laundering, perjury and theft more than a decade ago. His sentence was the maximum duration allowed under the law.

Madoff spent clients’ money instead of investing it as advertised, and then used subsequent investments to repay clients.

The photograph, which surfaced on Twitter earlier this week, shows three women posing, two of them with swastikas on their shoulders. The original poster identified one woman as Penn State student Ryan Milligan; the identity of the other is unknown.

“The reported anti-Semitic post is deeply disturbing and sickening. The Univ is contacting the individual alleged to be involved,” Penn State tweeted in response to the post.

The reported anti-Semitic post is deeply disturbing and sickening. The Univ is contacting the individual alleged to be involved. The Penn State community can visit https://t.co/LS8Qgr9lSV for a wide range of resources. We will continue to speak out against hatred and intolerance.— Penn State (@penn_state) June 2, 2020

As of Friday, a Change.org petition calling for Milligan’s expulsion had garnered over 40,000 signatures. The petition’s anonymous author argued that failing to discipline her would send a message that “antisemitic actions and ideals are accepted by the university, and that Penn State doesn’t care about protecting its Jewish students, as well as other oppressed and underrepresented minorities.”

In addition, another Penn State student has been accused of shouting racial slurs while driving by a May 31 protest against police violence. After a video of the incident circulated on social media, several people identified the man involved as a current student and the Penn State Black Caucus demanded that the university take action.

The university said in a May 31 tweet that officials were “aware of a disturbing video from a peaceful rally” and condemned “hateful speech and bigotry in all of its forms.”

However, in a June 2 statement released on Twitter, the university hinted at the limits of disciplinary action in either case. “A public university does not have the power to expel students over speech, no matter how morally reprehensible it might be,” the statement said.

Irene Katz Connelly is an editorial fellow at the Forward. You can contact her at connelly@forward.com.

Petition calls for explusion of Penn State student who posed with swastika

AIPAC hasn’t made a public statement about George Floyd. Activists are outraged.

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 25: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference on March 25, 2019 in Washington, DC. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak at the conference, but cut his U.S. trip short after a rocket from Gaza struck Israel. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has not issued a public statement about the killing of George Floyd, a decision that has greatly upset several activists and former staffers.

“AIPAC will argue that it’s outside their purview. But they often rely on the African-American and Latino communities to advocate on their behalf in communities with little to no Jewish presence,” said former AIPAC employee Julian Viso. “I would imagine there will be many difficult conversations ahead with these activists, as there should be.”

AIPAC, the country’s most powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization, is virtually alone among Jewish or Israel-focused groups not to have made public comments about Floyd or the ensuing wave of protests against police brutality.

J Street, which often criticizes AIPAC from the left, and the Zionist Organization of America, which does the same on the right, rarely make statements about subjects outside foreign policy, but both did so in this case.

An AIPAC spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. (Full disclosure: I interned at AIPAC for a college semester).

After this article was originally published, Jewish Insider reported that AIPAC leaders had sent a private letter to African-American members on Sunday expressing solidarity with the black community.

“Like you, we are horrified by the violent death of George Floyd and are angry, sad and hurt over the inequities that still exist in our country,” CEO Howard Kohr and co-CEO Richard Fishman wrote in the letter.

AIPAC’s public silence was criticized in a Facebook post by Matthew Epstein, a law student who worked as an AIPAC field organizer from 2017 to 2019.

“We must show the Black community that we actually care about them, make spaces for them, and recognize that systematic racism is real and must end,” Epstein wrote. “Allyship means nothing if we don’t use our platforms to amplify THEIR voices. Time after time we ask from our Black brothers and sisters. I know too many incredible Black people who have sacrificed years of their lives to support the Jewish community. So, where are you AIPAC?”

He called on white Jews to be allies to African-American activists, support black-owned businesses and join peaceful protests, among other measures.

Epstein declined an interview request, saying that he didn’t want to detract from his call for allyship by focusing solely on the silence of one organization.

The post has received more than 180 likes and dozens of comments. Other former AIPAC activists shared his frustration over the organization’s lack of statement.

“How can AIPAC post millions of photos about our African American allies without speaking out???” asked one commenter, a college student who interned for AIPAC last summer.

“‘We’re a single issued based organization’ can no longer be an excuse when you’re actively recruiting Black students at HBCUs to advocate for Israel,” added another commenter, an African-American man who went on a AIPAC-sponsored Israel trip in 2018.

While AIPAC has not made a statement about Floyd or his death at the hands of a white police officer, it did announce on Monday that it was cancelling its 2021 conference due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump as a treatment for Covid-19 — and taken by him to prevent contracting the disease — does not prevent against coronavirus infection when taken prophylactically, a new study found.

The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the drug, meaning that neither the researchers administering the drug to research subjects, nor the subjects themselves, knew if they were taking hydroxychloroquine or a simple vitamin supplement. That methodology is considered the “gold standard” of medical research.

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a Hasidic doctor in New York who has made it his mission to promote the use of hydroxychloroquine to prevent hospitalization by using it to treat high-risk individuals with early symptoms, both criticized the study and touted the fact that it found that the drug is safe overall.

Zelenko’s approach, of prescribing hydroxychloroquine at the earliest signs of Covid-19 symptoms in high-risk individuals, is currently the subject of a controlled study at a hospital on Long Island, which will not release its results until next year.

Zelenko has advised other countries to use the drug prophylactically, however, and said that he took it himself to prevent infection, because he is immunocompromised.

The study’s subjects, who were mailed either the drug or the placebo immediately after being exposed to a Covid-19 patient, were front-line medical workers and first responders. Of the 821 people included in the study’s final results, 88% had high-risk exposures; 12% of the people taking hydroxychloroquine contracted the disease, compared with 14% of those taking the placebo. The study authors concluded that this was not a statistically meaningful difference.

The study did find that the drug, overall, is safe, citing no instances of serious side affects besides nausea and diarrhea. Previous analyses of observational data of hospitalized patients taking the drug found heightened risks of cardiac arrest compared with no use of the drug.

(JTA) — U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democrat in her first term, has endorsed the Democratic primary challenger in her home state of New York facing veteran congressman Eliot Engel.

In a late-night series of tweets Wednesday, Ocasio-Cortez backed Jamaal Bowman, an African-American educator, over Engel, a 16-term lawmaker who heads the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee. Her district in the Bronx and Queens boroughs abuts Engel’s in the borough and suburban Westchester County.

It is unusual for a congressman from a party in a state’s delegation to endorse a primary challenger of a colleague.

Engel raised more than $1.6 million through March for his reelection campaign, which is about three times as much as Bowman.

But Bowman may have received a windfall on Tuesday when Engel, while asking to speak at a news conference in the Bronx about the current wave of protests over the killing of George Floyd, said near a hot mic that “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”